


Life Embodied

by Rhuckleberry



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Dancer!Lucas, F/M, Partially Deaf Character, Punk!Maya, Visually Impaired Character, lucaya - Freeform, rangerhuckleberry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 01:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4121626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhuckleberry/pseuds/Rhuckleberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lucas Friar is partially deaf dancer who seems to be the only one who can see Maya Hart clearly. And in which Maya Hart is a vision impaired artist who seems to be the only one who can hear Lucas Friar just fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Embodied

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**Day 1**

 

The first time she saw him was just after her diagnosis. The sky was pouring as if it was crying for her to overcompensate for her dry eyes, and Maya was soaked to the bone, to the soul, to the heart. She escaped into the first building she saw, not because she wanted to escape the rain, but because she wanted to escape her reality. She was exactly half way home.

 

Half way from having to tell Riley.

 

Half way from having to tell her mother.

 

Half way from having to accept this.

 

So Maya escaped, into the first building she saw really. The doors were heavy but unlocked, and the moment she stepped through the threshold she was greeted by a rush of cold air. She shivered like a leaf in her wet clothes, and left puddles on carpeted floors as soon as she stepped in, but Maya ignored that in favor of the music.

 

The music.

 

It was a sorrowful sound. The kind of melody that would either make you cry or put you to sleep. Well, maybe it would if not for the sheer volume of it. Maya could feel the rhythm beneath her feet, in her chest cavity, in her trembling hands. And Maya licked her rain-wet lips and started after the sound, walking in squishy sneakers that squelched with each step. She walked slowly through what must be a theatre, examining the rich read of the carpet, the warm brown wood of the desks and fixtures, the low light of the hanging chandelier that trembled with the bass of the music.

 

When Maya finally found the room she stopped in the entrance cold, eyes looking as far as they could see for now, her heart seeming to pause in her chest for a moment.

 

There was a boy.

 

He was dancing on stage, where the music was at its heaviest, where it all was at it pinnacle. And his body moves fluidly, like the time between one movement and the next is nonexistent, like the music flows through him. Sweat is wetting his brow and his toes point and his body is coiled tight.

 

And Maya was never a fan of ballet. But this is not ballet.

 

She sits down as close as she can get without him noticing her and just watches him. She watches as he finishes that song, and then slips effortlessly into the next, watches as he dances as if his lfe depends on it, as if every movement might be his last. She watches for what must be hours or maybe days, watches him until he turns off the music and leaves the stage through what must be an exit behind the curtain, and even then she sits and watches where he used to be, feels the echo of the booming music in her heart.

 

And it is not until the tears feel cold on her cheeks that Maya realizes that she’s been crying at all.

 

Because this could be one of the last things she ever sees.

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**Day 8**

 

Maya comes back every day that week. At different times, in different conditions of weather, in different states of mind.

 

The boy is always there.

 

He dances as if every day will be his last chance to. Like the shortness of this life is something he’s aware of but not something he fears. Like it’s something he’s ready for.

 

Yet at the same time, with every movement, it’s like he’s bursting with the stuff. Like he has life in abundance, life to spare, but he allows it to seep from every movement, every limb, every drop of sweat. He is life.

 

Life embodied.

 

He never sees her.

 

But Maya sees him.

 

After the eighth day she goes back home and opens her dusty boxes of art supplies.

 

The first thing she paints after her diagnosis is him.

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**Day 16**

 

She still hasn’t told anyone.

 

She knows she’s going to look at the world differently. But she doesn’t want them to look at her differently in return.

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_Day 22_

 

He sees her.

 

Every day since the first day when she came in, dripping like a soaked mouse and shivering like nothing else. He’s seen her and he’s always seen her.

 

But it’s not like he’s going to say anything.

 

Not after he saw the tear tracks gleam on her cheeks, not after he watched her shiver with the music because she’s like him, probably.

 

A lover of the world’s art.

 

And she hears what he’s saying, with his body, without pesky words or gestures or letters. She understands him.

 

Lucas can’t remember the last time someone understood him before seeing his hearing aids.

 

He can’t remember the last time someone didn’t define him first by his disability, and then last by everything else.

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_Day 30_

_‘Just stay home for once.’_

 

Zay signs the words with a pleading look in his eyes, fingers moving in the most non-confrontational way possible as if he expects Lucas to get angry.

 

Lucas can’t remember the last time he was angry.

 

He shakes his head and continues on his way out the door, his duffel bag filled with his uniform and chalk over his shoulder.

 

He signs as he opens the door with his back against it.

 

_‘I want to do what I love before it’s gone. I want to be who I am before I can’t anymore.’_

_._

_._

**Day 35**

 

She tells Riley.

 

It’s not like she really had a choice.

 

She crashed her car.

 

One second she was just driving, on the way to fill a refill of her medication for the eye drops that stung her eyes and blurred her vision for a terrifying minute (she hated them, she hated them, but she needed them god) and everything was fine. She was covered head to toe in acrylic paint, and she planned to see the boy after the errand and everything was  _fine_. 

 

But then her vision tunneled further, for one terrifying moment. Like a flicker into the future, into blindness, and Maya was so petrified that she braked too fast and skidded right into a telephone pole. And Maya sat in that car and cried for the half hour it took for the authorities to come, cried nearly the enter way to the police station, cried for the twenty minutes it took for Riley to come pick her up. 

 

Because she was an  _artist_. 

 

She couldn’t go  _blind_.

 

.

.

The entire time she explained the situation to Riley didn’t shed a tear. Her eyes widened when Maya first explained the situation to her, and they stayed that way through the entire conversation, bet they did not moisten. 

 

Riley just took Maya up to her bed, despite her protest that she wasn’t tired, and ran her fingers through her hair until Maya stopped silently crying enough to fall asleep. 

 

“Maya, we will find a way to deal with this. We might not be able to fix this but…we will survive this.  _You_  will survive this.” 

 

And Maya understood that. She  _knew_  that. 

 

But Maya didn’t want to  _survive_. She wanted to  _live_.

 

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**Day 36**  

 

“Farkle, I don’t know what to  _do_ …” Maya hears Riley sob softly, into the dead of night. Riley is probably in the kitchen. She hasn’t been to Maya’s loft that much, probably doesn’t know how well sound carries. Maya’s tears have long since dried and her eyes feel sticky with the after effects of it. She looks at the world through a vignette, sees the night through her balcony window as if it is a piece abstract art. 

 

“Farkle tell me what to  _do_ …” Riley begs and it is then and there that Maya Hart decides that her tears will no longer fall from her eyes. They will fall from her hands. 

 

She walks away from the balcony window, barefoot and in her pajamas, and picks up a brush and lets her tears fall from her fingers.

 

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 _Day 40_  

 

She doesn’t come for four days and Lucas notices. He doesn’t  know what exactly that means. All he knows that for seem reason the old abandoned theater that he dances in seems bigger. 

 

For some reason it all feels just a bit emptier then it did before.  
.  
.  
 **Day 48**

Maya steps away from the canvas, arms heavy and sore, her eyes tired and flickering like weak lights. She swallows hard past the lump in her dry throat, and takes a breath that fills her to the brim with the smell of paint, and dust, and art and beauty because she’s done it.

 

It’s done.

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_Day 54_

When Lucas put his hearing aids on this morning this wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. He was expecting to maybe hear Woodkid, or Explosions in the Sky, or even Mozart, maybe if he was feeling nostalgic.

 

But  _this_.

 

Zay signs as he speaks, a habit that he picked up from Lucas’ family after the first time he spent the summer with them, so it’s not the language barrier that makes Lucas insist that he repeat himself. It’s the confusion.

 

 _‘You want us to go to an art gallery.’_  Lucas signs slowly, just to make sure that he’s not misunderstanding anything. Zay rolls his eyes spectacularly and turns in his seat. It’s a natural movement, something practiced and habitual like the way that Zay will take the seat on Lucas’ left side rather than across from him at restaurants, or the way that they organized both speakers in the apartment to be on the left. Lucas is only partially deaf, and his left ear is not perfect but better, and Zay has adapted to that over their years of being friends better than anybody who wasn’t Lucas blood.

 

Lucas takes a moment to be thankful for that and Zay any time he can, prays to the things that he’s not sure exists to thank them for giving him a person who understands him but doesn’t  _have_  to.

 

Someone who wants him who doesn’t  _have_  to.

 

“Yes, I want us to go to an art gallery!” Zay says excitedly as he signs the words and Lucas’ brow furrows.  “I can appreciate art, Lucas.”

 

Lucas raises a brow and huffs a short laugh as he signs, ‘ _Zay._   _You think the Garfield comics are iconic.’_

“That’s because they are.” Zay says firmly, fingers moving with absolute confidence, and Lucas’ lips quirk as he shakes his head. “Don’t argue with me Lucas. It’s the truth. And besides, you can’t judge me. You’re an pretty much certified veterinarian with a dancing scholarship who watches  _Dancing with the Stars_  and  _Air Bud_.”

 

Lucas frowns and shrugs, just as Pongo jumps up onto the couch beside him, leaning his big heavy head on Lucas’ thighs. Lucas scratches behind his floppy ears and can just about hear Pongo’s snuffle of delight. He smiles and takes his hand off Pongo just long enough to sign ‘ _I have no regrets_ ’ before using both hands to playfully rub up and down Pongo’s back. Zay laughs

 

“Dude, we are going to that art gallery. It’s an hour trip there and back but if we start driving as soon as class is over we should be able to make it back home before it’s too late. And besides, even if we make it back at three in the morning, it’ll be worth it! There’s something that you need to see.” Zay says with a smile, his fingers signing almost too lackadaisically for Lucas to understand, but he gets the gist because Zay has his mouth turned towards him and he’s sitting on his left and he fixed the finicky volume button on his hearing aid yesterday.

 

And Lucas stops pretending to argue, because the only things that Zay ever asks for from him anymore is that he watches cartoons with him and rests and drinks enough water.

 

Lucas can do this one thing for him.

 

He can go one day without dancing.

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_Day 55_

Going a day without dancing in theory seems doable. But in reality it’s like-

 

It’s like every time he hears a song on Zay’s radio and he feels like it’s not loud enough. Even though it is. It’s just as loud as it’s always been whenever he’s in Zay’s car, loud enough for even Lucas to hear but it feels like it isn’t it feels like it’s getting quieter and quieter with every second as if he’s chasing after the sound, to hear it to feel it.

 

As if the music is slowly fading from him, every second he’s not moving with it, side by side, drum beats with heartbeats.

 

Without the feeling of the bass reverberating through his bones it’s almost like Lucas can’t hear anything at all.

 

Which is terrifying.

 

But Lucas says nothing. He breathes deeply, and just turns up the music, ignoring the slightly worried glance that Zay throws his way.

 

Because his hearing isn’t getting any worse. He’s being ridiculous.

 

( _please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please_ )

.

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People stare.

 

They don’t mean to, most of the time, but they do. Through the corner of their eyes, in the reflections of glasses and windows, for a few shocked moments before they turn away.

 

But sometimes people don’t stare. Out of respect, they look at everything but you. As if you aren’t there. As if you don’t exist.

 

Lucas doesn’t know which he prefers but it’s not like he has a choice between the two. It’s people. It’s how they are. They can’t help it when they see someone like Lucas.

 

But Lucas just breathes deeply and holds his head up high, continues signing his conversation with his best friend. Because there’s one person, one girl in an empty theatre who stared for the right reasons. One person who saw who he really was before she saw what he lacked. And Lucas holds onto that, remember the awe in her eyes and repeats the expression over and over again in his mind like a mantra.

 

_You are more than this. You are more than what they see. You are more._

_You are art._

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When Lucas finds the piece that Zay wanted him to see he stops cold, the world around him turning into mumbles and rushes of noise as his heart seems to pause in his chest.

 

It’s a boy.

 

His leg is up and perpendicular to his body as he balances on the peaked toes of his left foot, his body taught and structured if not for his hands. His hands are up in the air in a gesture of freedom, high and graceful and relieved.

 

The background is grey and dark and bleak. A vignette around him, darkness at the edges that slowly tunneled into light. And in the entire painting the boy’s the only thing in color. In Technicolor, really. It’s almost like every strand of hair, every inch of skin, even the sweat that flies off the boy’s brow as he’s in the motion of turning his head, is a different color and shade of the rainbow. The sweatpants he’s wearing shimmers of darker purples and blues hues, and his skin itself (his torso bare) is a kaleidoscope of yellows and pinks and blues and oranges.

 

And Lucas hears it. The words that aren’t spoken, the pleas for that life, that art, that freedom. He hears it like a scream in every brushstroke, in every color selected, in every delicate freckle dotted on the boy’s face in technicolor. And it takes Lucas breath away, makes the hair on his arms stand on end, makes his heart stutter.

 

The boy is life embodied.

 

Lucas doesn’t know what to do at first. He’s completely speechless, unsure how to move on. Zay nudges him with an elbow and Lucas turns to him, realizes that the one thing he was doing for Zay really wasn’t for Zay at all. Zay grins.

 

“Like it? At first I thought, ‘yo, this looks scarily like Lucas’, and then I thought, ‘maybe Lucas would like to see the painting that looks scarily like Lucas,’” Zay signed as he spoke animatedly, and Lucas felt a small smile begin to curl on his lips, a smile brought from awe and that special kind of giddiness that comes with being in the presence of beauty. “And then I thought, ‘maybe the painting that looks scarily like Lucas is of Lucas’?”

 

Lucas huffs a laugh of mixed emotions, feeling the giddiness and awe and happiness swirl around in him like vigorous waters.

 

‘You think that is me?’ Lucas asks as he point at the picture and Zay makes a face of exaggerated confusion.

 

“You don’t?”

 

And Lucas shakes his head, and is about to answer that that can’t be him. He can’t be that person in that painting, he’s seen himself a million times and his eye sight is just fine thank you, he knows what he looks like and that’s not him.

 

But then he sees her.

 

At the edge of the crowd, not yet looking their way, but turned towards them.

 

She looks the same as she always does. Her leather jacket over a t-shirt and jeans, her blonde hair a mess of curls around her small head, her blue eyes looking like beacons while they’re surrounded by the dark eyeliner around them. Her boots still have the same spikes that he recognizes from her putting them up on the chair in front of her and her belt matches it and Lucas heart skips a beat because underneath all that black that she wears, he can see the color within her, spilling out in rivets and twists and swirls, her skin like stained glass that lets her light shine through.

 

Life embodied.

 

And she turns around slightly and catches sight of him. And Lucas stops cold even though he wasn’t moving, his heart pauses in his chest as her lips twitch because –

 

She is art.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sorry for this. If you want someone to blame for all this angst blame Rich and Grace from series 3 of Skins! There will be a part 2 to this and then we will be back to our usual fluffy schedule. 
> 
>  
> 
> This was born because it is that wonderful time of month that Des is moody and wants to eat everything and write angst and pretty things. You may say, ‘Des, I thought that you were going to continue the 100 AU!’ and you are right to say that. I will continue the 100 AU when my body isn’t attacking me with feelings and pain. I’m sorry for the delay, but Idek guys I’m just feeling so sad about ships lost. Like Rich/Grace. Gosh they were great. 
> 
>  
> 
> Oh yeah, Maya has Glacoma if any of you were wondering. Lucas was born partially deaf or developed it when he was very young, I haven’t decided yet but just know that the entire time Zay has known Lucas he’s been this way while Riley is just having to deal with her best friend (who is an artist) going blind now. Zay is not a better friend and Riley is not a worse one their situations are just different you know. Zay has had time to adapt. 
> 
>  
> 
> What else? Oh this is a two-shot. Everybody around me was writing two-shots and I felt left out tbh.
> 
>  
> 
> Lastly, I really hope I didn’t offend anybody. It was not my intention to offend anybody ever, and if I did offend you, I’m sincerely sorry.
> 
> Visit me if you feel compelled to: http://rangerhuckleberry.tumblr.com/


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